Neulateinisches Jahrbuch

In his verses, Mantuanus was fond of pointing out the position of prominent con­stellations at the time of great developments on earth. Sometimes however he got confused whether a star was rising or setting. The nature of early sky-globes and planispheres, who looked at the stars ‘from the outside’, might be the reason for this uncertainty. In his Fasci and elsewhere, Mantuanus reproduced the star-catalogue in the 5th book of Manilius, without seeing that these are so called paranatellontes and without realizing what this would imply. And then there is this tricky wandering of the equinox: if the sun stands at a given day somewhere, that does not mean, that exactly 1500 years earlier it was at the same position. But Mantuanus stands by no means alone among Neo-Latin poets in his failures mentioned. And in a way all these misinterpretations and errors are understandable: astronomy is no light matter.

In De poesi hodiemorum politicorum, Christian Weise (1642-1708) emphasises the Propempticon, which the Societas Disquirentium in Jena dedicated to its member Eberhard Rudolph Roth on his appointment to the Ulm Gymnasium in 1674, as „highly subtle“. This poem, an „astute inscription“ of 47 lines, is translated into Ger­man and stylistically annotated here. It is shown that the poem – in accordance with some theorems by Jacob Masen, Emanuele Tesauro and Christian Weise – contains a number of typical elements of the „astute diction“, but expresses the authors' cen­tral message, the emphasis on their strong inner bond with Roth, in an unusual way, and does so in a „highly subtle“ manner.

Leonhartus Albertus, a Czech poet of the age of Rudolph II, touches upon the Long Turkish War in three poems published in his Epigrammata (1603). Two of them are addressed to Albertus’ cousin Caspar Prellius. One of the poems is a typical propempticon offered to Prellius, who is about to depart for the front in Hungary – the verses show the author's humanist education. The other poem – a moral exem­plum – gives a jocular warning to the addressee against prostitutes. The third poem discussed is an ecphrasis addressed to the utraquist priest Zacharias Bruncvik, show­ing the saga-hero of the same name (Bruncvik) as the ideal of a christian soldier fighting against the muslim enemy, who is symbolized by a dragon-devil. The hero is clothed in allegorical terms, a depiction which probably is influenced by Hrabanus Maurus’ work De laudibus sanctae crucis. Although the manuscript of De laudibus sanctae crucis from the abbey of Fulda (Vatican City, Reg. Lat. 124) was ordered in 1599 by Rudolph II and copied at Prague in 1600 (Paris, Bibliotheque de l’Arsenal, cod. 472), Albertus more likely knew the early print, edited by Jacob Wimpfeling in 1503, since he lacked close contacts to the imperial court. The lost original given to Zacharias Bruncvik presumably contained illustrations supporting the text.

The article focuses on the Neo-Latin poetic works of Václav Alois Svoboda (1791–1849), particularly those included in his gymnasium anthology Poëseos latinae Specimina from 1832, reflecting his teaching career at various Czech gymnasiums. Svoboda, a notable Czech National Revival poet fluent in Czech, German, and Latin, is remem­bered in Germany for being the author of the first complete poetic translation of all of Seneca’s tragedies into German and for his globally influential poem Sanct Wen­ceslaw und Podiwin. His works often intertwined classical themes with contempo­rary issues, influenced by German Neohumanism and the Sturm und Drang move­ment. Despite the low development of classical philology in the Czech lands, Svo­boda's educational materials and poetic talent significantly enriched Austrian gym­nasium education and contributed to the preservation of Latin, demonstrating the adaptability of the domestic literary environment at the turn of the modern era and Romanticism.

Under Margrave Francesco II Gonzaga (1466–1519) and his wife Isabella d'Este (1474–1539), the Mantuan court became a centre of contemporary artists and writ­ers. Among them was the hitherto little-known poet Ludovico Andreasi (Ludovicus Andreaseus). He dedicated a book of elegies (libri elegiarum) to Isabella, in which he not only laments various calamities, but also glorifies Francesco’s deeds at the Battle of Fornovo (on the River Taro; 6 July 1495). The account is inspired by the preliminary work of Teofilo Collenuccio, a poet from Pesaro who died in the battle. This essay offers an editio princeps of the elegies and a literary analysis of the book.

This article presents a text, translation, and analysis of a celebratory elegy addressed by the Franconian humanist Engelhard Funck to Pope Innocent VIII on the occa­sion of a peace treaty with the kingdom of Naples. The likely date and political cir­cumstances of the poem are identified, and attention is paid to the major literary sources and to Funck’s manipulation of his source material. The analysis locates Funck’s elegy within the tradition of Latin and Neo-Latin poetry celebrating the return of the Golden Age in the reign of contemporary dignitaries, and assesses the value of such occasional poetry for social and cultural historians of the early modern period.

The article deals with two Latin words for eyeglasses, ‘conspicilium’ (the most signi­ficant spelling), and ‘specillum’, and it seeks to study their origin and their represen­tation in large Renaissance dictionaries. Unlike the other words, which were used for optical implements in early modern era, these two were believed to have denoted eyeglasses in Classical Latin. In fact, quotations from classical authors, which sugge­sted the meaning ‘eyeglasses’, were originally fabricated or distorted by Niccolò Pe­rotti (conspicilium), and, probably, Christoforo Landino (specillum). Both words in question appear in classical texts: ‘specillum’ is a medical tool, and ‘conspicillum’ is a rare Plautine word with uncertain meaning, thereby, we encounter with a special case of forgery, that is, a falsified lexical meaning. Surprisingly, it was accepted, and elaborated by Robert Estienne, and it seems to have been never doubted until mid-17^th century. Metrical aspects of Perotti’s forgery are also studied.

A group of dedication letters in books of 1531, 1536 and 1554 is here interpreted. They have in common that the humanist editor of an almost finished edition of a classical author surprisingly died, before he could write a dedication letter to a special addressee, who had become known. A friend of the deceased helped out, edited the book and wrote a dedication letter to the intended addressee. He used the oppor­tunity to include a first biographical obituary of the deceased. These are editions of Gregorius Nazianzenus, Origines and Appianus, and obituaries of Pirckheimer, Erasmus and Gelenius, composed by Erasmus, Rhenanus and Curio. Parallels of thought and words make manifest that the later writers were aware that they took up and developed the tradition of this type of letter.

This essay is dedicated to the poetry collections Hymni sacri (1661) and Odae sacrae (1664), written by the Saint Gall Benedictine monk Athanasius Gugger. The two works are first presented in terms of form and content, categorised in the intellectual and local time horizon and examined with regard to their reception and possible purpose. This is followed by an examination of selected poems, organised by epoch (antiquity, the Middle Ages, modern times), which sheds light on essential elements of Gugger’s thought. In addition to the poetic strategy of a parodia Christiana, a substitution or even surpassing of pagan antiquity through Christian content, which was important for his poetry, his knowledgeable interest in the Middle Ages, which, like late antiquity, offered him poetic role models, is particularly evident here. With a view to modern times, Gugger’s inner openness to contemporary spiritual and pas­toral innovations in the Catholic world is addressed.

The Vat. lat. 458 is an Augustinian compilation widely annotated by Petrarch. This article offers an edition of Petrarch's marginalia, largely unknown until now. It fur­thers our understanding of his relationship with the works of Augustine and more generally the Fathers, like Athanasius, a matter that has become the focus of recent research and yet requires additional investigation. This paper also provides a new, updated description of the manuscript and so presents a more nuanced picture of what Petrarch read and understood as truly Augustinian. For example, while he emended some Pseudo-Augustinian passages with Cassiodorus’ De anima, he did not detect interpolated excerpts of Augustine’s De Genesi nor of Alcuin’s Interrogationes et responsiones in Genesim. Together, these data allude to the complex background of Pet­rarch’s reading and annotating of Augustine’s works, most notably those on the na­ture of the soul, of knowledge, and sin.

This article shows in detail that, far from being mutually exclusive dramatic traditions, early modern English university drama (normally but not always written in Latin) and the London popular stage enjoyed a frequent and mutually beneficial in­teraction. The fact that they were normally written in different languages posed no insuperable barrier since any man who had completed a grammar school education (or nearly so) would have been capable of reading and learning from university plays. Hence, on the one hand, the plays of Shakespeare and other London playwrights sometimes show signs of influence of academic ones, and plays produced at Oxford and Cambridge not only reflect those of Shakespeare, Ben Jonson and others, but often cater to the same audience expectations, tastes, and relish for current ‘fads.’

RAF VAN ROOY / ISABELLE MAES, Πράγματα Lovanii pervestiganda: Projects on Classical Bilingualism in the Early Modern Period

Galeotto Marzio, De doctrina promiscua. Critical edition with Introduction and Notes by Enikő Békés (OVANES AKOPYAN)

Clementina Marsico / Mariangela Regoliosi (edd.), Laurentii Valle De elegantia lingue latine (ALEJANDRO COROLEU)

Niklas Gutt, Johannes Freinsheims Supplemente zur zweiten Dekade des Livius (FLORIAN SCHAFFENRATH)

Alejandro Coroleu, Latin Political Propaganda in the War of the Spanish Succession and Its Aftermath, 1700–1740 (TOM ZAGO)

LUCIE STORCHOVÁ / KRISTI VIIDING, Bericht über eine Tagung in Prag

LUC DEITZ, Bericht über eine Arbeitstagung zum Verfasserlexikon der Luxemburger Autoren, 1500–1814 (VLLux)